She Lived 117 Years. What Was Her Secret?

“Before she died last year, after living 117 years and 168 days, Maria Branyas Morera invited scientists to study her. The world's oldest woman thought her body and life story had secrets to reveal about longevity.

 

"She told me, 'My only merit is to be alive,'" said Dr. Manel Esteller, chairman of genetics at the University of Barcelona School of Medicine in Spain and senior author of a newly released study of Branyas's genome.

 

Supercentenarians, a rare group of people older than 110, are tracked and their ages validated by an international nonprofit known as the Gerontology Research Group. Two hundred or so are alive today, the eldest now being a 116-year-old British woman.

 

Branyas was born in San Francisco but at age 8 moved to the Catalonia region of Spain, where she lived out her life. Esteller and his colleagues took samples of her hair, saliva, urine, stool and blood in her final years and compared her genome to those of hundreds of other women living in the same region.

 

Branyas's DNA showed that she possessed a rare mix of gene variations associated with immune function and cardiovascular and brain health. That contributed to her living some 30 years longer than the average Catalan woman.

 

But perhaps most notable, the researchers said, was that Branyas's biological age -- essentially, a measure of how old your cells and tissues are -- was far younger than her chronological age.

 

Older cells accrue DNA damage over time, and the greater the damage, the less likely the cells are to function properly. For example, younger, healthier cells are more likely to suppress certain cancers.

 

"Her cells behaved like they were 23 years younger," Esteller said.

 

Lifestyle choices can affect one's biological age. Branyas didn't smoke or drink and ate a Mediterranean diet enriched with olive oil, yogurt and fish with minimal refined sugar. She had very low cholesterol. And her microbiome -- the community of bacteria and microorganisms in the gut that helps digest foods -- was also characteristic of someone much younger.

 

As people age, the diversity of bacteria and the presence of beneficial microbes drops. "These bacteria provided an anti-inflammation feature," Esteller said. "And we know that if you have chronic inflammation, you age very fast."

 

Analyses like this one, the study authors said, could help guide companies looking to develop antiaging therapies that can target genes.

 

But a study of a single supercentenarian means that the takeaways from this research are less powerful than those that might come from a population-level study, said Austin Argentieri, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital who conducts large-scale studies on human aging and wasn't involved in the study.

 

"Some of these findings may be quirks specific to Branyas," Argentieri said.

 

There was clearly something remarkable about this woman, according to study co-author Bernardo Lemos, co-director of the University of Arizona's Coit Center for Longevity and Neurotherapeutics.

 

Branyas's two surviving children are women in their 80s and 90s. Her third child died in an accident in his 80s. "So her children are older than most people," Lemos said. "That alone tells you something."” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Science Shorts: She Lived 117 Years. What Was Her Secret?Woodward, Aylin.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Oct 2025: C3.